my kind of town, chicago is

Feb 10 milwaukee eagles ballroom
Tis a mild 15 degrees out whence we roll into the parking lot of the eagles ballroom. I head out to check into the dayrooms, as I have heard that the showers here are scary. The last time I remember being in this building, we had to hotfoot it out of there. Different times indeed. So basically it is a day spent next to a radiator in a production office, enjoying some pretty darn good bbq. The ballroom upstairs is a beautiful round, sort of like the Hollywood palladium. And man there are an awful lot of people showing up tonight, 2840 to be exact. I think that is the sum total of audiences in Milwaukee in my entire career. It is immense.
The guys spend the day in the opium denlike backstage area watching reality tv, these things are like viruses, very virulent viruses at that. We get to groove on viva voce as they play a rocking set to the very partisan crowd. Our guys hit the stage and the place goes nuts throughout the set. It is not as brilliant as last nite in mpls, but the kinks are definitely being ironed out. By the time we hit ‘new slang’, the place is awash with cel phones and good times. This generations lighters, I guess. Afterwards we have the requisite snack session backstage, replete with red wine and a bunch of ej/s family members and some of the voce mates from chitown. We take it pretty handy out in the parking lot, as tomorrow is the windy city.
Feb 11 chicago congress theatre sold out
We get in early, breakfast at el cid, the best breakfast burrito I have had not made by my lovely missus. It is so good I cannot help but share with hernadez out on the bus. Everyone is hooked and they are off to el cid. We get inside early, introducing ourselves to the house of blues crew, and prepare ourselves for the very easy day.
I lock myself into the production office and work towards the next three tours, we have a drum tech today which is quite helpful for mr zivich and crew, things go real smooth until the IEM/s take a shite sometime during soundcheck, fortunately the kids from the grammy institute miss out on that one.
I manage a walk outside but the windchill is excruciating, as much as I may want to head out for dinner, the fish tacos for lunch sufficed, they were stellar.
So it is 630pm and al;l systems are go, the entire Johnson family seems to have arrived as well as some other familial sorts. God I love Chicago, I am beginning to think that there is no finer city in the united states. It has it all and brains to boot. The best looking crowd I have seen in sometime, I can say that much. And we get all sorts of surprise visitors, including the lemos family, nice to hang out with them, to be sure.
Vv hit the stage to a sparsely populated but enthusiastic house, and by the time they are off, there are an awful lot of Midwesterners out there tonight, and it becomes very apparent which side their bread is buttered on, as the roar(to put it mildly) reaches a tumultuous crescendo, the one time my cel phone fails to record. It is very impressive, and they lads proceed to play the show of the tour. I manage to catch most of the show throughout various spots of the room, a beautiful old vaudeville theater near logan square. By day cold and spooky, by night all warm and fuzzy, I guess that/s the way it/s going to be. Aftershow, everyone is delighted as we have our first big post show hang with guests. We go en masses with april, the house monitor engineer, to the green eye bar under the el tracks at western. Good times and tamales ensue. Sometime later, and well scoobied, we call it a night and head for st louis.